Many portable electronic devices include displays for displaying various types of images. Examples of such displays include electrowetting displays (EWDs), liquid crystal displays (LCDs), electrophoretic displays (EPDs), light emitting diode displays (LED displays), etc. In EWD applications, an addressing scheme is utilized to drive the pixels of the EWD. Generally, one of the points of emphasis for EWD applications is low power design since in today's applications EWDs are often intended to be used in mobile and portable media devices.
An input video or data-stream generally represents a sequence of pixel display values, grouped per line; a sequence of lines, grouped per frame; and a sequence of frames defining a frame sequence. When such a data stream is to be reproduced on an active matrix EWD, a timing controller and display drivers are used to process the incoming data-stream and to control the state of the actual pixels of the EWD. A specific addressing scheme is used by the timing controller to timely control source and gate drivers of the EWD. The purpose of an addressing scheme is to set (or maintain) the state of a pixel. The addressing scheme drives an active matrix transistor array and provides analog voltages to individual pixels of the EWD. These voltages modulate the luminance of the pixels of the EWD. The pixels are grouped per row and when a row is addressed, voltages of a complete row are stored as charge on corresponding pixel capacitors. As the display-data is repeatedly updated, still and moving images can be reproduced by the EWD.
When driving the pixels of a display, various components operate according to a drive scheme. In conventional devices these drive schemes are usually created in an ad hoc manner, oftentimes in a lab setting, and are fixed for a particular device. Because the drive scheme is fixed, the same drive scheme would be used for a display device that is displaying text data, which changes infrequently, and a display device that is depicting video content, which changes frequently and requires a high refresh rate. Because of this, a drive scheme that may be efficient for a first display device operating mode (e.g., displaying text) would continue to be used in other modes (e.g., displaying video or game content), even when the drive scheme is not as efficient.